


Trident

by crossingwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 22:48:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1364608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter





	Trident

It’s too bloody hot. Too bloody…There are beads of sweat on his face, he feels them dribbling between his eyes, and he can’t even lift his arms to wipe them away.  Sweat is supposed to cool, but nothing is sweeter than tugging off a breastplate and feeling the breeze on his clammy skin.

The Little Bitch just left him there, rage in her grey eyes—grey with hate, when he’d saved her, and saved her bloody sister too, and buggering hells he was hot.  Usually when he was hot in his armor he could kill something, move, beat it away, but not now, now he couldn’t move and he could hear the twittering of birds and the fucking whisper of leaves that sounded like the swish of skirts the color of the sky overhead.

It was worse than all the Seven Hells—being trapped by the weight of his own armor as he felt his own hot blood pulse beneath his skin, throb the way his face but no not the way his face, better and worse and hotter and colder and he couldn’t even move, he couldn’t even kill, he couldn’t even yell because his throat was too dry because he couldn’t lift his fucking skin to his fucking mouth and even if he could there was no bloody wine left and his skin was on fire and flinching or looking away wouldn’t help because he felt the heat of it on his face, Gregor’s hand in his hair and his grunts as he pushed his head deeper and deeper into the coals and all he could see was

Red, orange, auburn in the sunset light as she stared out the window at the sea, staring in the kind of way that wasn’t seeing anything, holding her abdomen where he knew that Ser Meryn bloody Trant had hit her that morning, his gauntlets still on and she was bruised and all he could do was stand and stare like her, pretending not to see anything because he wasn’t here for her he was here for the little Princess who was curled in a chair reading a book the Imp had told her would prepare her for Dorne.  The little Princess’ hair was gold, like the light bouncing off the waves in the setting sun, but the Little Bird was the sunrise and the sunset with eyes like the sky over head, and at least if he was dying he could see her eyes now wide and blue and staring down at him and there weren’t grey clouds in the sky, heavy rain clouds like her sister’s eyes, looming, and you could never quite tell when they would crack open and rain would fall and wash away everything, wash away his skin from his bones until there wasn’t anything lying beneath

Him. She just lies there this one, while he thrusts in and out, and she can’t bring herself to look at his face and without looking at him what’s the point of even pretending to like the feel of his cock slipping in and out of her.  Well at least she was getting paid for her time, the bitch, even if she wasn’t worth the coin if she didn’t at least pretend to ignore his burns.  Sometimes they look away, sometimes they don’t.  The whores at least are used to a man with scars—noble ladies like battle scars though, slashes across the cheek, or above the eye, or poking up above the collar, showing how brave you were, and how close you were to death, but you survived and fuck it all he’d survived too but all of them looked away, every single one of them, except

The Little Bird wasn’t even aware that she hummed to herself, little tunes he’d never heard before as she slipped in and out of the Godswood at night.  She always stopped when she saw him, so sometimes he stayed back to listen; other times he’d step out of the shadows, wondering if this time she’d just sing for him, just keep singing, just let the music rise out of her throat whether in defiance or because she might see that he liked her song, that her voice was like nothing he’d ever heard before, and her laughter was like

The autumn breeze isn’t cold enough and it’s some horrible prison trapped by your own weight, the weight of your armor, the heat in your own skin pushed back at you by the heavy metal that’s supposed to save your life, not keep you trapped in your own

Thoughts were hard for the Stark girls to hide.  The Little Bird thought she was clever, thought she was calm, but she wasn't really, not really, because it was plain to see in her eyes what she really thought, that she hurt that she raged that she was sad and alone and afraid, just as it was plain to see in the exact same thing in the Little Bitch's eyes. They both of them were so clear, easy to read, easy to see that they were frightened of him and oh Seven Hells she was frightened of him and he didn't want to frighten her but he did want to frighten her because if she wasn't scared of him then what was she and if she wasn't then was she what her sister said she was?  The Little Bitch, at least, wasn't scared of him anymore, she just stared at him balefully and angrily and didn't care whether or not she left him to his

Death wasn’t what he was scared of—he’d never been scared of dying, not since he was a little child and he’d lived even though his face was melting off it was surviving and if he caught fire on the river and fought and lived but the rest of him melted off what would she see when she stared at him?  Would she look at him still or would she glance once, then down at her hands and call him fucking “Ser” and commend his bravery even though his bloody bravery hadn’t saved her from bloody Joffrey and his bravery hadn’t saved her mother and brother from death at the hands of their own men, or her father from the King’s Justice and it wasn’t as though he’d been brave at all, in fact, because he’d bloody run from the

Battle of the Blackwater, the river on fire and even if it was green it was fire, twisted demon fire, some twisted demon trick from the fucking Imp and his armor was going to melt onto him and he’d never get it off and he couldn’t get it off because his hands were shaking in his gauntlets, and the leather lining was hot against his skin, almost as hot as when he clawed at the slabs by the hearth trying to push his head away, away, away but he couldn’t because Gregor was bigger and stronger than he was, and older too, but that didn’t matter, and it didn’t matter that Gregor wasn’t there at all, the fire was there, and he needed to get out, needed to stop, needed to kill people, make men bleed, because either he died or they died, with their

Guts spilling loose from his flesh as he cut through him, straight down, blood spurting from his neck and even bits of brain splattering everywhere, and if the stupid boy hadn’t run maybe he’d still be alive, and if the stupid boy hadn’t run certainly the Little Bitch would have done what he asked and fucking killed him because she wouldn’t be mad at him for that, at least.  She could be mad at him for abandoning her sister, for dragging her away from her mother and brother, for anything she bloody well pleased, but it was vengeance for her bloody butcher’s boy that she wanted and why she had left him here to die slowly, with all the time in the world to think of everything and nothing and how the fuck he would run if he bloody could, ride hard and fast until he hit the Wall or the sea, or he didn’t know bloody where because he was all done now, spent, not that the Little Bitch cared because she was as much a monster as he’d ever been, cruel, heartless, destroyed and vengeful and what did it matter who lived and who died so long as she killed her list of

Joffrey was the one who told him that the Little Bird had her blood.  “She’s ready for me to put a son in her,” the King had said the night before the battle.  “Maybe I’ll do it when I’ve defeated my Uncle Stannis.  As a celebration,” and he’d only grunted, because what else could he do, not when the horrible thought of her lying there, blood between her legs, lips swollen from kisses, blue eyes lazy as she ran her fingers through his hair and pulled her to him and held him against her heart still beating like

A caged bird, that was all she was, singing her songs and lying because lying hurt less than telling the truth and how he wished she didn’t have to learn it that way, because watching her lie hurt somehow, because when would she lie to him?  She tried to lie to him—she had called him valiant and good when he’d pulled those bloody rapers out from between her legs, but he could see in her eyes that she didn’t mean it—not that way.  Those words were no more than a song, a courtesy, and her eyes told him the truth that she was glad he was there, grateful he’d saved her, but didn’t for one moment forget how he’d held the man by his throat and slit his belly so that his entrails dropped down in heavy loops, because how could she think a man who killed was truly a good man, when the only men she’d ever see kill were Gregor and the man who’d killed her father. How could she believe that killing was a thing that all men did, her brothers, her husband, her sons, every man killed, because when you fought, when heat rose through your veins and all you could do was keep swinging your arms, killing was the only way to let out the

Fire on his bloody sword. He’d lit his bloody sword on fire and swung it at him, and in the dark of the cave all he could see was the orange light as it approached his face, approached

His eyes hadn’t been melted shut.  The Maester had said that was a good thing.  He’d squinted or something, not let the skin be melted shut, not let the eyeball melt in the flame because he’d left them open but it had just meant that he’d been able to see the logs crunching under his face, the coals glowing hot as Gregor thrust his head down, harder, and harder, and

“Harder,” she’d moaned as he’d fucked her—the little whore with the red hair at some brothel near Flea Bottom, because fuck the bloody brothels Littlefinger ran, or the fancy ones the Imp went to, he’d take the cheap whore that looked like sunset, with stretchmarks on her belly, and whose tits were big enough to fit in his hands and they bounced as he fucked her, and she moaned as he sped up, pushed into the moist heat of her cunt, because somehow, a cunt wasn’t fire it was something else, but something similar and when he was inside one he still saw flame so he might as well see fire on her head as she cried out and called him “Ser” and he grabbed her chin and told her not to call him that and she opened eyes that were big and brown and

The wrong color. The Little Bitch was in every way the wrong color and she looked at him with dead eyes, the way his sister did, and he knew, just knew, what she’d seen, because how can you not know what “Ser” will put people through, make people watch.  He’d seen too many dogs put down in his life, good dogs, kind dogs, loyal dogs, brave dogs, but you couldn’t put a dog down if he was a knight, you couldn’t put a dog down even when he does the

Worst was when she died. She just up and died in the middle of the night, and he’d found her the next morning and she’d been cold and her lips had been blue and her eyes had been open and he’d been standing in the doorway watching as he cried because she was _dead_ and didn’t he care that she’d just _died_ —but of course he didn’t care.  He didn’t care when father died either, he just stood there glaring and that night he had stolen a horse and ridden for Casterly Rock because he’d be buggered if he stayed there alone with

Gregor, at least, had left King’s Landing.  Gregor, at least, hadn’t been there to frighten the Little Bird, hadn’t been there at the King’s beck and call, because Gregor could hit harder than Ser Meryn, Ser Boros, Ser Aerys, Ser Preston, and Ser Mandon combined and Joffrey knew that and what if he’d been the one hitting her that day in the throne room, would he have stopped when

The Imp—tiny, twisted, horrible man—he was the one she was married to now.  He swaggered a lot, for a man so little, and had never had to learn to watch himself because his heroic knightly brother liked him well enough. He had taken her even though she could never want a little Imp like him.  He’d probably thrust inside her like a whore, not caring that she was barely a maiden flowered and that she didn’t want him, didn’t want anyone, because she could never want a horrible man because she only ever wanted

Ser Loras, the buggering fool, didn’t have the sense the Gods gave a flea and knocked Gregor from his horse and thought that his knightly vows would save him, because he had never had a hateful, spiteful, evil

“Brother.” The voice was distant, muffled, but the hands wiping the sweat from Sandor’s brow were cool and close. “Brother, can you hear me?”

Sandor blinked and he couldn’t see the sky anymore, just a face, a man, old and wrinkled and weatherbeaten, with crinkled kind brown eyes.  He was unbuckling Sandor’s breastplate now, letting the heat out, an the scent of the festering wounds.

“Come now, Brother,” said the man.  A Septon—bald-headed with flimsy flyaway whiskers on the side of his face—“Let’s get you cleaned.”


End file.
